The 28-year-old told Good Morning Britain's Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid she wanted to challenge people's perceptions of what a woman's body "should look like".

She said: "If you go on social media and put yourself out there you have to be open to it (trolling), and that I completely understand, it does make sense.

"However, what I want to stand up for is any women or men or journalists who come at me and say 'Your body is wrong, you should not look like that, women should not look like that, that is not feminine'. What is feminine?"

The former Dancing on Ice contestant was hit with negative comments after posting photos of her toned abdominals on her Instagram account at the weekend.

She posted a long message responding to someone who commented that the photographs were "disgusting - there's nothing feminine about that!".

Her reply, sent to her 90,000 Instagram followers, read: "What's disgusting is not my body, or any human body for that matter - fat, thin, muscly, curvy, size 6-16, none of the above are disgusting.

"What's disgusting is your brain, that has been brainwashed for into thinking anything other than "feminine" is disgusting," she continued.

The model and fitness lover has been dating England rugby player James Haskell since November 2014. She launched her own fitness and nutrition website, called Fitness Fondue, in 2013.

"It doesn't make me feel insecure about how I look," she told Good Morning Britain, "What it does make me feel is very, very angry that there are people out there, masses of people who think their opinion of how a woman should look is the right opinion."

She added that people were "absolutely entitled to disagree", but said she wasn't advocating that all women should look like her.

"I'm saying this is how I like to look, but the flack I get back is them saying women should not look like that," she explained.

Viewers flooded Twitter with support for her, with one tweeting: "The amount of work and dedication needed to achieve this kind of body why the hell shouldn't she show it off."

Another wrote: "I get her argument, I really do. The trolls are just sad losers in my mind."